


A Shieldmaiden's Strength

by orphan_account



Category: Vikings (TV)
Genre: Angst, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-21
Updated: 2013-07-21
Packaged: 2017-12-20 20:49:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,474
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/891705
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Death drops like a bomb, and sometimes you just have to deal with the fallout.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Shieldmaiden's Strength

**Author's Note:**

> I started writing this after the S1 finale and then just kind of forgot about it and just recently finished it. Can be read as pre Athelstan/Lagertha/Siggy if you turn your head and squint.

She stays strong.

 

Even after her child is ripped from her arms, snatched away by the greedy hands of death that stole so many from her land.

Gyda was not a warrior, never lived long enough to take up a sword if she had the desire to. Even still, Lagertha prays that she has made it to Fólkvangr, where Frejya will keep her. It is the only thought that comforts her for many days.

At night, she dreams of her child standing in ankle deep water along the shore near their old farm. She calls her name, _Gyda, my child_ , but Gyda does not respond. Lagertha tries to move, but cannot. So she calls out until her throat is raw and bleeding. Until she chokes on the name of her daughter, and she too is dying.

Some nights, Bjorn is there. He is wrapped in black furs, sitting by her side in the water. Neither of them turn to look at her. Ragnar is nowhere to be found. 

 

She stays strong.

 

Even as the burned bodies fill the air with an acrid stench. The stench of fresh death.

Flesh and flame mingle to conceive smoke like a man and a woman conceiving a child. But a child does not snake it's way around good people's throats, choking them with translucent fingers, filling their lungs with poison and their hearts with grief. 

Burning her child hurts no more than burning the rest. Gyda and Thyri return to the earth, and leave the taste of rot and dust in their wake.

More than one man wretches at the smell of burning bodies. Lagertha refuses. Even if she wanted to, there is no food inside of her to come up. Only bile, black and thick like death. No, she does not see the point in vomiting, so vomit she does not.

 

She stays strong.

 

Even as, each night, she hears a soft weeping. _Siggy_.

Its a sound that is pulled from the deepest pits of anguish. Sometimes, Lagertha stays awake and listens to it until the sun is ready to rise. She allows herself to cry, but not to weep. But when she hears those noises, those awful sobs, she feels empathy deep I in her bones. It's as if Siggy's heart has been pecked and prodded mercilessly by a great, large crow. 

If Lagertha closes her eyes, she can see it. A heart covered in gashes and craters, yet it beats weakly. It beats because that's what it's always done, what it did when it lost her sons, her husband, and now her daughter. Siggy weeps openly in the night not because she is weak, but because she is strong enough to have survived having her heart gouged by the gods so many times that she has earned the _right_ to cry.

Lagertha admires that as her own heart bleeds.

 

She stays strong.

  

Even when she sees the darkness of exhaustion around Athelstan's eyes. It's like an imitation of the markings decorating Floki's face, an insult. Lagertha feels a strange rage building under her skin at the sight. Not at Athelstan, but at his God.

She wants to blame his God for tainting the pilgrimage. Perhaps this is her fault for becoming so attached to a Christian, to someone devoted to a weaker god. Odin is unhappy with her, she thinks, and has sent a plague to punish her and her people. It's fear that brings those thoughts forward, ugly, terrible fear. Fear that she might loose Athelstan as well.

Lagertha doesn't do fear, she does anger.

Her rage boils to a crescendo, and she goes to confront Athelstan. Her words are meant to feel like a blow to the face, like a sword to the gut. She wants him to feel the pain that she has been feeling, wants him to understand what it is like for a mother to outlive her child.

And then she stops. His head is bowed in submission, he says nothing in his defense. Though he came to their shores a foreigner, a nonbeliever, a _heathen_ , he hurts just like everybody else.

Guilt blocks up her throat, and she says no more. After a moment of silence, Athelstan kneels at her feet. _Forgive me_ , his Christian soul begs; though it does not beg to his god, it begs to Lagertha. 

The rage she had felt boils off, and all that remains is a heavier sorrow than before. So she puts her hand on his head, gently laces her fingers in his long hair, and tries to sooth him as she had with Bjorn and Gyda.

Christian he may be, Athelstan is still apart of her household, and the closest thing to family she has right now.

 

She stays strong.

  

Even through the nights alone. Ragnar will not be pleased when he returns, but Ragnar has not been pleased since the day he came home to find a pale and sickly wife with no newborn heir. Ragnar will not be pleased, no, but Ragnar will have to deal with it.

Most nights are spent alone, pacing slowly through the dim light as her mind tries to decide if she's angry or scared or sad or just flat out _tired_. She misses her husband and son, but they will not be back for some time still.

When she tires of pacing, she lies under the furs and wonders why the gods have done this to her. Why they have made her skin and her mind and her heart so cold.

And then, one night, the gods deliver her warmth in the form of a disheveled, sleep deprived Christian.

Lagertha catches sight of Athelstan wandering barefoot outside, looking lost and unhappy. It reminds her of the look about him when Ragnar had first brought him here. He would let his eyes wonder, looking fearful and intrigued, and clutched that strange book to his chest.

But now that's gone, too.

Lagetha goes out after him in the cold, and he doesn't notice her until she's almost on top of him. He looks no less confused when Lagertha takes his hand and pulls him inside, but he doesn't fight back. When they reach the bedchamber, Lagertha expects some kind of protest, but Athelstan lets himself be dragged around to the side of the bed.

Not even when Lagertha peels back the furs and gestures for him to lie down does he struggle. He just looks her with unhappiness and fatigue weighing heavily on his heart, and crawls down on the bedding. Lagertha gets in beside him and draws him close.

She doesn't spend that night begging the gods to return her husband and son to her unharmed. She spends it _sleeping_. So the next night, she beckons him again to her bed. On the third night, he's already asleep under the furs when she enters her bedchamber in the evening.

They don't have sex. Lagertha would never dream of such a thing without her husband present. No, they lie together in a chaste embrace and fight off dark dreams of angry gods together.

  

She stays strong.

  

Even when the mood around her stays bleak for weeks and weeks. She conducts business because she has to. Trade and harvest don't just stop because the Jarl's wife is sad.

Sometimes, she finds herself in a financial jam. That is when Siggy, sad and broken, raises her voice enough to give advice. Lagertha goes to her when she is at a loss, either economically or emotionally. It feels wrong, at first, to dump her problems on someone who has lost so much more than her. But under Lagertha's attention, Siggy seems to bloom into something resembling contentedness.

It's apparent that Siggy has it worst of all. With her husband and children dead, she is left with nothing. So Lagertha tries to give her something. A good night's rest, for starters.

Athelstan still sleeps by her side every night. After a small bit of coaxing, Siggy joins her as well.

It's not entirely strange. In the winter, many people take to sleeping in piles to keep warm. But the winter is moving into spring, and her husband will be returning soon.

She has not been unfaithful, and she longs to have her husband sleeping by her side. But _this_ , the way Athelstan curls his head under her chin like a child, the way Siggy breathes softly into her hair, the way they both hold her close and keep the demons away, _this_ she will miss.

 

She stays strong.

 

Even though, at times, it is hard. But when the gods do not provide comfort, the boy to her right and the woman to her left do. Servants, enemies, heathens, family, whatever they may be, they both have heartbreak covering them like a winter frost.

And they stay strong as well.


End file.
